I Choose Not To Talk. So What?

It’s a war out there, where neither side understands one another, and as such, both sides get hurt. I’m not talking physical harm, or bloody violence, I’m talking emotional harm, or just plain indifference. You see, the combatants in this war are Extroverts vs. Introverts.

When I was a kid, no one understood me. I was quiet, preferred to be left alone and could easily lose myself in my imagination.

But my family would have none of that. I was picked on, I was encouraged to ‘come out of my shell.’ I was called on in class and forced to stutter my way through a pointless presentation or read aloud in such a soft voice that no one could hear me, and I’d be forced to raise my voice to the point where I considered myself to be yelling.

As I came into adulthood, I began to understand that I was not alone, but that didn’t really help me, because so much of the world still has expectations that no one is ‘normal’ who cannot act boisterously or with enthusiam. (Boy I hate that word)

I wanted to shut up, and frankly, I wanted the world to shut up too! I was quite content sitting reading a book, or letting my mind drift. But the world hasn’t changed much since I was a kid. I’ve been forced to take jobs where I had to talk, where I had to interact with others in order to make a living.

Fast forward to today, where I simply cannot work like that any more. I wrote a blog a few days ago highlighting why I shouldn’t work in the field of customer service, and one of those points is ‘I don’t like to talk.’

Okay fine, so don’t talk.

But it doesn’t end there, because of the expectations of an extroverted world.

So I decided that more needs to be done. You see, I am quite capable of working, thinking, creating and as such, I’d like to use the gifts I have to promote a better understanding between extroverts and introverts.

Introducing ‘I Choose Not To Talk’, an organization that promotes just that. The concept is that I produce a series of videos that will be combined into a documentary that highlights the differences between the personality types. I plan to shoot a whole bunch of unscripted scenarios where introverts have issues with extroverts. I plan to interview the participants before and after the scenario to get feedback from both types.

The scenarios include:

• The Party – Assuming introverts would even want to go to a party, the problems they have fitting in are difficult to overcome.
• The Blind Date – Opposites attract?
• The Job Interview – Having been on a few of these myself, I have to say they are the worst for introverts.
• And my worst case Scenario: The Phone Call – This is especially daunting for an introvert when his or her social energy has been drained by a previous phone call or contact.

There’s a side business in buttons and shirts featuring the ‘I Choose Not To Talk’ logo. I don’t know if that alone would be enough to keep the business going, but I’m sure going to try.  I may even add a mouth guard that takes the form of a zipper.

I’ve also started an Indiegogo campaign to help raise funds to get the company off the ground. It can be found at http://igg.me/at/ichoosenottotalk/x/5011549.

So let’s get back to the question asked at the top. So I choose not to talk. Why should you care? Well, first, the interactions can be very entertaining. The scenarios will be unscripted, so who knows what may happen. The second aspect of the videos, if you’ve seen my original video, will be that I plan to take myself on the road, using signs like I did in the video to make my intentions known. The reactions to that should be funny.

Entertainment aside, you should care because it might help you to understand why people act like thay do, and it might keep you from making an ass of yourself, or hurting other people’s feelings.

And that’s the point I’m trying to get across. If you don’t understand someone, you won’t know when you’ve hurt them.

If you look at the logo I created (crude, I know), you’ll see that interspersed with the words is a face. The eyes on the face are looking down, and the ‘mouth’  is zipped shut (in the form of a strikethrough). That’s pretty much how I feel most of the time. I hate eye contact, I keep my mouth zipped, and I only talk when I have to.

As this project starts to gain interest, I plan to add other elements, including resources for both introverts and extroverts to understand each other.

So come for the funny videos showing that idiot who won’t talk, and stay for the understanding of why he chooses not to talk.